Irish Planning Analysed

Okay, so I’m putting a Top Ten Things That Sucked, 2008, list together which I’ll be posting in the next couple of days, but I need your help. I have already decided what nos. 10, 9, 7, 5 and 1 are going to be but I haven’t got anything yet for nos. 8, 6, 4, 3 or 2, which is where you come in – I’m looking for suggestions.

But remember now its me you're dealing with here, so if you’re going to make a suggestion and you want me to include it, you can’t just simply propose something that sucked in a blandly obvious way: it has to be something the rest of us hadn’t realised was so terribly annoying until you brought it to our attention in a clever, pithy, ironic and weirdly resonant way. For example, it’s no good saying that Sarah Palin sucked in 2008 when, clearly, she sucked so badly she’d make it onto any ninny's Ten Worst List (along with the likes of ‘The Economy’, ‘Bono’, ‘The Toy Show’, ‘The Banks’, ‘Trapp and Andy’ etc.). Sarah Palin’s awfulness is not interesting. What is interesting is that an Irish Times editorial said that her selection as a running mate for John McCain was ‘inspired’. So, if Sarah Palin got up your nose, your suggestion should read something like ‘Things that Sucked, 2008, No. X: Irish Times Calls Sarah Palin’s Nomination ‘Inspired’ ‘.

I’ll leave you with a little taster.

No. 10 in the 2008 Planning Dispatch List of Things That Sucked is…

Big, brave Fintan O’Toole popping his head over the parapet by as-if-out-of-the-blue announcing in a sharply worded and seemingly original Irish Times tirade that Damien Hirst is a fraud… a week after the world’s most respected art critic, Robert Hughes, had done the exact same thing – except with originality – in the Guardian. (I know that, technically, Fintan did acknowledge Hughes’s earlier piece, but for some reason the acknowledgement made him seem even more like a copycat.) Cheesy.

I realise I'm asking for a lot, but please try to think up things which don't involve the Irish Times because, in addition to debuting at no. 10, they also get mentions at nos. 7 and 5 and they were going to be no. 2 until I changed my mind.